342 Book reviews
Joseph Wheller, Ralph Ellsworth, Ellsworth Mason and Nancy McAdams reminds a reader why library buildings are interesting to discuss and read about.
A book about architecture should be full of graphics; unfortunately this one is not. Some of the most interesting material on library architecture has been produced in Europe over the last 20 years, especially the Nordic countries; unfortunately this material is not represented. Much of the European material is available in English and the conversion of metric measurements should present no problem.
As anyone who has explored the literature on library architecture knows the field is full of redundant articles. Schnell could have improved the collection by eliminating some of the redundancy and provided greater breadth. For example, the five articles on the use of consultants could have been reduced to the McAdams article and one other. In the section on Mechanical Spaces, four of the five items discuss lighting. There is no coverage of heating, ventilation, elevators, plumbing, telephone and general electrical systems. One would hope for better coverage in a general reader. Some of the material is badly dated and cannot be viewed as a classic, e.g. Educational Facilities Laboratory’s “Impact of Technology in Library Buildings” and Toffer’s “Libraries”.
All in all it is an uneven collection but is still a cut or two above many of the other titles in the series. At $18.75 one must question whether it would be better to spend a few more dollars and acquire the most comprehensive book on the subject, Keyes Metcalf’s
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Planning Academic and Research Libraries. If one is thinking about a textbook for a course on library architecture in the $15-$25 price range, Metcalf’s book would, in my opinion, better serve the student in the long run.UCLA Graduate School of Library and lnfomation Science
G. EDWARD EVANS
Teaching and Media: A Systematic Approach. VERON S. CERLACH and DONALD P. ELY. Prentice Hall. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971. $12.95, 393~~. L.C. #71-138476 ISBN O-13-891333-1.
Media Personnel In Education: A Competency Approach. MARGARET E. CHISHOLM and DONALD P. ELY. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976. $12.95, 378~~. L.C. #7S-33054 ISBN O-13-572461-9.
Donald Ely and Veron Gerlach are two very prolific writers in the field of educational media with dozens of journal articles and several books to their credit. Almost all of their writing relates to problems in using media in the classroom, and personnel to produce and service educational media. Margaret Chisholm has been active in the library media field for a number of years. She has also written extensively on the use of educational media in the school environment and its application in any library setting. The authors are all recognized authorities in the media field.
Gerlach and Ely arrange their work in five parts, (1) Teaching and Systems, (2) Designing Instruction, (3) Arranging the Variables for Teaching and Learning, (4) Assessing and Evaluating, and (5) Media Facts. The first three quarters of the book (parts l-3) reads like an outline for a beginning teachers’ training course in how to teach. It is full of education jargon and generally the reader is treated as someone with minimal intelligence. Each chapter starts with the statement “When you have mastered the content of this chapter you should be able to (a) Identify (2) Name. (etc., etc.)“. While a school librarian or media/le~ning resource center librarian needs to know something about teaching methods, these methods are geared to primary and secondary school environment only. Perhaps some of the techniques apply to academic level teaching but only to a limited degree. Thus teachers at the college and university level in library and information science will find little of
value in the first three sections of the book.
The final section on media facts is of some value to the fields of library and information science. They cover a number of media, computers, filmstrips and slides, games and simulations, motion pictures, overhead transparencies, phono-records, pictures, programmed instruction, tape recordings and television, Although each topic is covered in a few pages they do provide concise, useful, discussions of the primary advantages and disadvantages of each medium for educational purposes.
Unfortunately there is no formal index or bibliography. There is a “matrix” index which this reviewer failed to recognize as an index. After a careful reading of the instructions on the use of the matrix, it was clear it was the index. Where the columns and rows have only one entry there is little problem. When multiple entries are made the user will have to do a lot of page turning because the terms used in the matrix are very broad and general. All in all, this book by itself would not be worth having in a personal library for the library and information science professional. Combined with the second book it is a worthwhile addition to an organization’s library.
Chisholm and Ely are concerned with the problem of training media personnel primarily for elementary and secondary schools but the material can also apply to public and adademic libraries. As with the ElyCerlach book, this one is intended for both pre- and in-service personnel. Realistically only one of these goals can be achieved. Chisholm and Ely succeeded in writing a very useful book for the novice in the media field.
They begin by trying to differentiate four classes of media personnel; aide, technician, media professional-specialist, and media professional-generalist. With this excellent beginning it was disappointing to find they did not try to carry this theme throughout the text. It would have made this an outstanding book had they tried to identify certain tasks for each personnel class. What they did do is to identify ten functions the media person must perform (Research, Evaluation, Design, Production, Utilization, Logistics, ignition management, Ins~uction, Personnel man~ement and information Retrieval). It is claimed that “there are some aspects of each function that can be done by personnel with different training and expertise” (p. 45). By this they mean that all four classes of personnel participate in each function. Great! The questions have been and still are: what levels of skill are required; can problems of overlap be overcome: etc., etc.? Libraries and media centers have been struggling for years with these problems. The book provides an example of how a function could be divided between aides, technicians, and media professionals. Unfortunately, although each function is discussed in chapter, the authors never again make the critical judgments as to who should perform what. This is an important flaw, but really why should Chisholm and Ely be criticized for failing to do something no one else has been able to accomplish? It is just that they come SO close it is disappointing to have them fail.
Given a great beginning the authors proceed to discuss each function in terms of competencies required to carry out the function and indicate how they think one can go about acquiring the necessary skills. They do this in a step by step analysis of
Book reviews 343 the function. This will be a very useful book for teachers of media personnel. Whether it can be a classroom text is debatable.
As a teacher I would find it helpful to use elements from the book but would not like the highly structural format as the basis for conducting a course. Perhaps a first time “teacher” might want it as the text since each chapter has exercises and problems for the student. A very nice feature is that for each competency in each chapter there is a brief bibliography.
In the last analysis this is
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not a book to train all media personnel. It is a book to train media professionals. If it is viewed in this light it is very successful; if it is viewed as a tool for training all classes of media personnel, it is a failure.UCLA Graduate School of Library and Information Science
G. EDWARD EVANS
Reader in Library Technology. SHIRLEY GRAY ADAMOVICH. Microcard Editions Books, Englewood, Colo., 1975.236~~. $18.75 L.C. # 75-8051 ISBN O-910972-52-4.
Number twenty in the Reader Series in Library and Information Science does little to add to the reputation of the editor of the series or of this volume. If anything, this book epitomizes the major flaws in the conception and execution of the series.
First, there is the problem of the title; library technology is not the same as library media technical assistants (L/MTA). How anyone, editor or publisher, would allow that discrepancy to pass unnoticed is impossible to determine. The book’s editor makes no attempt to explain the difference in terms. Each of the five major sections deal only with L/MTAs. The major divisions are: Part I Library Technology-Growth and Development; Part II Policies and Criteria for Library Education;
Part III Definition and Debate; Part IV Education of the Library Technical Assistant; Part V The Library Technical Assistant at Work. All the parts may sound as if they deal with the broad field of library technology but the only articles are L/MTS articles.
Paul Wasserman, the series editor, states in the Foreword “unlike many other academic disciplines, librarianship has not yet begun to exploit the contributions of the several disciplines toward the study of its own issues.. .it is clear that the job of synthesizing the most essential contributions from the elusive sources in which they are contained is overdue.. This then is the rationale for the series. .“. This is a worthwhile purpose but does this volume, much less the whole series, do this? The key words are “the several disciplines”, “synthesize the most essential”, and “elusive sources”. Certainly the mere republishing of 51 journal articles grouped under a few broad headings cannot really pass for synthesis. Nor can one or two paragraphs at the beginning of each major section, prepared by the volume editor, pass for meaningful synthesis. Where then is the synthesis?
If we cannot have the promised synthesis perhaps we can have the “essential” “elusive”, “in the several disciplines”,
items. Of the 51 articles in this volume only one comes from a journal or report outside the field of librarianship. So much for
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the several disciplines. What about the elusive sources problem? Again the record is not impressive; ten articles are from Illinois Libraries, six from Special Libraties, five from A merican LibratieslALA Bulletin, and three from the Bulletin of the M edical Library Association. Almost half of the items are from journals that are readily available and certainly could not be called elusive. What of the rest? Some are in journals that may be difficult to locate but all but two items taken from books could be found in Library Literature.
One would hope the list of problems could end at this point; unhappily it cannot. Even if you can dismiss the above list of faults as irrelevant, the book conveys an inaccurate message. The message is libraries need hundreds of L/MTAs because of a library manpower shortage. Ms. Adamovich does discuss this problem in two paragraphs in her preface/introduction;
unfortunately introduction/prefaces are seldom read carefully. Part of the problem is the preface was written in August 1974;
the book published in 1975 and there are only ten articles taken from 1972, 1973 and 1974. If one takes into account the lag time in journal publishing it is easy to account for Ms. Adamovich’s comment “it is interesting to note that after 1972 or so interest in technicians.. . as expressed in periodical articles, falls off sharply” (p. xiii). Given a 12 month lag, 1971 would be the point in time when it became clear there was no manpower shortage.
The articles chosen for inclusion are good pieces on the subject and are worth reading whether in this volume or in their original source. Ms. Adamovich knows the field; she has good ideas and understands the problems surrounding L/MTA’s and librarianship. I hope she can find the time, in the near future, to provide the field with a book giving her synthesis and thoughts about this critical issue. She has obviously reviewed the literature critically; she has taught in L/MTA programs; she has employed L/MTAs and she can write, if the preface is any indication; all these factors place her in a special position to produce a very important book on the role of L/MTAs.
This book is overpriced for material that is reasonably available. No teacher should require students to buy material that any good teaching library collection can readily supply.
UCLA Graduate School of Library and Information Science
G. EDWARD EVANS
Weeding Library Collections. STANLEY J. SLOTE. Libraries Unlimited (Research Studies in Library Science No. 14). Littleton, Colorado, 1975, 177pp.. glossary, bibliog. index 087287-105-3.
Originally the Research Studies series was intended to make available research studies of some but limited interest to the library/information science profession. So far most of the titles in the series have had a much wider appeal than ever expected. Certainly Slote’s book falls into this category. Weeding a collection, or as information scientists are inclined to say-file purging, is a perennial problem. Lazy librarians like lazy gardeners find this problem grows rather than remaining constant during periods of neglect. Because of the need to deal with the problem and the fact that this is the only current book in English on the subject, there has been a lot of interest in the title.
